Gardening Gardening

We got an unbelievable amount of peppers this year

 

They sure are!
I'd guess we got well over 120 jalapenos from 3 plants

 

Our peppers did great till about 2-3 weeks ago. We had 4 nights with frost that took out the tomatoes, but the peppers made it through the early frosts and started pumping out fruit. We picked a couple times early in the summer but the 90° days brought them to a halt, even though we watered regularly. We got some rain and it cooled down in September, then the peppers ramped back up.

 

Collards are getting bigger. Heading for the dirt shortly. Gonna plant 2 lbs of onion sets today...

 

The drought here is really bad. My pepper plants never got to full size. One of the timers I use for drip watering would fail and not shut off but I used it anyway because there was no way to drown anything. If it watered all night instead of two hours they were dry again in two or three days. Mine are just starting to turn red and many are damaged from the heat. They didn't bloom for like two months so the big peppers are already quite old. I planted 70 plants and I'll gat a crop I could have gotten from a dozen or so on a good year. I'll be salvaging some by cutting off bad parts instead of just tossing them I think. Some of the better looking plants have quite a few little green ones on them but it's now a bit late. We have another week of warm-ish weather so we'll see. No trips to the local church food bank with my over-production this year unfortunately and this is certainly a year of need. I kinda feel bad that my garden did so poorly.
We never had record high temps, just two months of baking sunshine day after day. Some places got thunderstorms and a little rain. I'd watch them dissipate and never get this far. Sometimes I could see the thunderheads go by north or south on the horizon.

 

Wish you were closer Bill. I'd give ya a couple bushel. We were pretty dry here too. Ran drip lines 12-14 hours every day. High temps over 80 will cause peppers to drop blossoms. For some reason my peppers missed the frost we had the last couple of nights. Stihl pickin.

 

Same with the frost here, all the tomatillos dropped but the tomatoes that were still alive and the peppers are OK.
I had some chili pepper at one corner of the garden droop with the cold night two weeks ago but recovered.

We did get 3.5 inches of rain last week so there's that . Too late to do much but help undessicate some things that could use it.

 

Most of my tomatoes are gone, but I had some that came up volunteers in pots dedicated to other things.
This was a cilantro pot . I have no idea exactly what sort of tomato except it has had fairly normal (baseball) size tomatoes considering the size of the plant and being in such a tiny pot.

 

Bonus maters!!. Been eating grape and cherry volunteers the last 2 weeks. Film at 11.

 

I figure at some point in 142 pages this has been discussed but since I'm pretty new to this thread I figure I should ask if anyone uses any of their wood ashes in the garden as fertilizer? I was thinking about throwing some into my raised beds to mix in and let it overwinter, along with layering the top with leaves.

 

I routinely throw wood ashes into my garden. Not every single bucket I toss but it gets a good bit. I seem to have excellent soil for what I grow but I also regularly enhance with peat.

 

Hard to see but Stihl some cherry and grape maters in there

 

Ashes are a good source of lime and potassium. Don't use where you have or might plant acid loving crops like potatoes,strawberries,blueberries. My 5 gallon ash bucket gets dumped on my gardens all winter.

 

Those plants look pretty Husky...

 

That's exactly what I do. Wood ash sparingly though. Don't want to overdo it, especially if your soil is already basic or alkaline on the PH scale. It's one of those "it depends" things. Although I've never actually checked my soil PH, I try to amend with ash in moderation. I suppose it's good practice to actually check.

Should You Use Wood Ash in the Garden?

As far as adding leaves for top cover, I've been in that habit for years. I'll add a layer of mulched leaves which protects the microbes in the soil from extreme cold. Fall is also when I add a good amount of chicken waste into the soil, also I cut up and turn my plants into the soil so they can break down too. Wood ash will be added randomly during the winter. The idea is everything will break down all winter and be incorporated into the soil by spring. It seems to work for me.

 

That's where I put mine all Winter. Sometimes I'll sift it thru a screen and bring the coals back to the stove. I try to spread them out well as I've dumped a bit heavy and it has suppressed the weeds from sprouting. The coals won't hurt anything either if left in the garden, I just do weird things sometimes.

 

But your garden is 100x bigger than most.

 

i don't put wood ashes on the garden boxes, yet. I just got a ph meter to check the soil (thanks Steve)
My neighbor puts all his ashes on his garden box and it seems to be fine.
I've read that ashes can kill your good worms and microbes

 

Ashes are a rather weak source of fertilizer with little persistence. I've found I'm better off saving them in a barrel and putting them down in March is more effective than puttting them down now for next Spring. Especially if you are using them to try to kill/discourage moss in the lawn. Worms and microbes aren't going to appreciate a caustic load of much of anything.

 

I have several spots that are moss laden and I just dump some ashes in those spots when I empty my ash pans. I also have an ash pile over by my compost bin so I add ashes to that every once in a while. And I don't care about worms because they aren't native to NH and actually decimate the forest litter that the trees rely on so I'm doing my part to help the environment by giving them loads of caustic stuff